Greetings.As promised I have returned to close out the week with a new chapter in the Funky16Corners Radio saga.
You may have noted that I’m in the midst of quite the little mix-making tear. Today’s podcast is a tribute of sorts to one of my personal faves, the man known to the world of soul 45 collectors as Jerry O.
I won’t go into to much detail here – I will instead refer you to the long form piece I wrote some years back for the Funky16Corners web zine.However – and this is a big however – I would be remiss if I were to let this mix spill out of the MP3 delivery system of your choice and on into your ears without at least an introduction.
Jerry O, who as far as I can tell slipped the surly bonds of earth sometime in the early 70s, was to paraphrase the great comic Pat Cooper, a “genius of himself”. He was part of an era where very few performers in the world of funk and soul (not to mention just about every other musical genre) didn’t make at least one or two trips to the “dance craze” buffet. Where Jerry O diverges from the pack, is that where another artist may have seasoned their discography (sometimes liberally) with dance records, his was composed of little else.
This is still an understatement of sorts. What Jerry O did, over the course of a career that lasted just over half a decade, was grasp a simple idea – that being a tune engineered to introduce/perpetuate a new dance – and hammer roughly the same raw materials into shape over and over again like a potter would a lump of clay on a wheel.
This is not to say that his songs all sound the same – though many of them include repeated, overlapping elements (like his catchphrase ‘Papa Cheeeewwww!’) – but that he seems to have taken a rather simple idea, and beat it not quite to death, but into complete submission.
One of the things that set Jerry O apart from the pack, was the fact that he wasn’t really a singer in the classical sense, but something closer to a cross between a Jamaican toaster and an inner city square dance caller. He adapted a Rex Harrison-gone-uptown style of talk-singing that was constructed almost entirely of a mixture of exclamations, dance steps, working the Jerry O “brand” to death, and a heaping helping of old school jive that may not have originated on the same planet as Slim Gaillard and Babs Gonzales, but was certainly orbiting in the vicinity.
There are those in the collector world – pretty much the only people who have ever heard more than one or two Jerry O 45s – who don’t dig the bag that he was in, and I can’t really take issue with them. Jerry O, like liverwurst, black beer and grapefruit, is something of an acquired taste (which I surprisingly enough, have acquired). When I was assembling this mix I tried to get to the heart of the Jerry O vibe, including some of his earliest successes with his original partner Robert ‘Tommy Dark’ Tharpe, his biggest chart hits as a solo (‘Karate Boogaloo’), and some of his best funky sides, including the little heard ‘Funky Football’.
It’s important to note that Jerry O – like many of his contemporaries – recycled instrumental tracks, though he seems to have taken it to a whole new level. If you refer to the article and the discography in the web zine, I tried to untie the Gordian knot that Jerry O tangled as he used, re-used and re-re-used tracks (especially as b-sides, but also with other artists that he wrote for and produced) through his career. I excluded most of these from the mix, which is why this edition of Funky16Corners Radio is one of the shortest on record, clocking in at just under a half hour. There’s a whole lot more Jerry O out there, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised that some day, when I’ve reached the bottom of the Funky16Corners well, you may be downloading a ‘Jerry O Rarities’ mix.

He was also a great example of soul music as it transitioned to the sounds of funk.
So, download, ingest and (hopefully) dig.

On a related note, keep your ears peeled, as I put together a special mix for Galactic Fracturesthat should be dropping in the next few days.

On that note, have a most excellent weekend, and I’ll see you all on Monday.Peace
Larry

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This entry was posted on June 22, 2007 at 2:46 am and is filed under 45s, funk, funky16corners, Podcasts, soul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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YEAH!!! been tryin to come up with “football boogaloo” for quite some time-THANKS!!! also, i might add that the White Whale label 45 JerryO did (“Hucklebuck”) is one of the SMOKIN-EST pieces of wax i own. GREAT STUFF!!

Man…Jerry-O changed my life. His music was delightfully insane…unselfconscious, fun, non-sensical (spelling?) lyrics which are so far out they make sense. Mmm mmm damn good! Thanks for flying the flag…

WONDERFUL! First heard Tom & Jerrio’s “Boo Ga Loo” on a WDAS Soul Sounds compilation album back in the mid-1960s. But the Big Hook here is that a local band from Essex County NJ adapted it as their finale number for local dances. They were The Intruders, and later Mario & The Immortals. Mario Baeza (his father was from Cuba?) was from Verona and this band was IT on the local scene for a number of years. At the end of the finale, they would form a line and each member would do his steps from one end to the other. Mario was later nominated for some sort of Cabinet position by Bill Clinton, but he didn’t get the job. That’s it AND THANKS AGAIN

JUST HAD TO ADD I checked on Mario L. Baeza and he is HUGE! High profile lawyer, investment banker, founder of AJM Records and the guy who put Ashanti on the musical map. And his father died of a heart attack while he was in grammar school. You’ll be boggled if you “google” him.

[…] (but really, what is???), but it swings nicely, and should be easy to find. Folks that caught Funky16Corners Radio v.25, the Jerry-O mix might recognize the melody of the Soul Toranodoes (I always assumed that it was supposed to be […]

hello,I was and am a big jerry-o fan,I saw him once in the late 60’s on the swingin time dance show and amn did he ever cut the rug,doing the Jerry-o get down,I use to own Dance whatcha wonna dance,the karate boogaloo,and Funky four corners.I would love to have his music,where can I get it to down load or something,45’s or something?I wish Swingin Time host”Robin Seymour” would package those shows in volumes in dvd’s and sell I’d buy Jerry-o’s appearance immediately…Peace